Recently in Bad monkey! Category

So my buddy Dale passed along this fine WaPo op-ed opinion column on how Jon Stewart is an "enemy of democracy," and by "fine" I mean "not fine." The gist is that two political science profs did a study that showed that people who watch the Daily Show have this crazy notion that politicians are idiots, our electoral system is in shambles, and that the country is basically going to Hell in a hand-basket. You see, if people think things are bad they might not vote. So obviously the "problem" is that people are hearing bad news.

Classic. Utterly freaking classic...

It's not the "insane jackasses" in the House of Representatives that is making people apathetic...it's hearing that they're insane jackasses. Iraq is only going bad because we hear about it going bad. Domestic spying is only a problem because we heard about it. Torture is only wrong when we find out about it, otherwise it's just good tactics. Global warning wouldn't exist if Al Gore would shut his pie hole! Government corruption doesn't exist until the liberal media makes it up...and yet people still get indicted. Odd, isn't it?

We're so divorced from reality we can't even begin to fathom that we have real problems that people need to know about so we can, you know, solve them. But no! That just makes people cynical and apathetic and then they don't vote. In what kind of world does any of this make sense? As Atrios is wont to say, CLAP LOUDER!

Dear Washington Press Corps,

I'll let Spoil do the 'splainin' on Colbert.

What Scheiber and his dim-witted colleagues fail to understand is that it wasn't supposed to be entertaining to the tuxedo-clad propagandists gathered at the dinner. They were, in fact, the target.

Oh, and a nice quote from Whiskey Bar too.

Colbert's routine was designed to draw blood -- as good political satire should. It seemed obvious, at least to me, that he didn't just despise his audience, he hated it.

Still don't get it? That's too bad.

It really is despicable when the Vice President of the United States of America tries to sell a load of crap to the American public.

This is despicable politics. It's not just polarizing - it also undermines the efforts of the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to combat terrorists in America. Every time a member of the Bush administration suggests that Islamic extremists want to stage an attack before the election to sway the results in November, it causes patriotic Americans who do not intend to vote for the president to wonder whether the entire antiterrorism effort has been kidnapped and turned into part of the Bush re-election campaign. The people running the government clearly regard keeping Mr. Bush in office as more important than maintaining a united front on the most important threat to the nation.

'Our side is the only real American side' is not a campaign strategy. Bad monkey! (via Daily Kos)

Apparently he thinks that saying "the terrorists" want Bush to loose is testing the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.

President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq -- a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, no! Bad monkeys! Dana also starts a list of other bad monkeys on this topic:

• Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee
• GOP Senate candidate John Thune of South Dakota
• House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.)
• Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage
• Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.)
• Ann Coulter
• CNN analyst Bill Schneider

In TIME Magazine, Jon Stewart answers 10 Questions. The last two are about the role of the press.

DOES IT WEIRD YOU OUT THAT PEOPLE TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY AS A POLITICAL PUNDIT? Well, I don't know that that's the case. But I will tell you this: I don't put any stock in political commentating. Political commentators at this point are mostly rewarded by the extremity of their viewpoint. Most of the analysis you see on television doesn't reflect the general sense that the public feels about a situation. It's two sides advocating, with no arbitration.

SO YOU'D LIKE TO SEE MORE ARBITRATION? That's the change I would like to see — that the news media take a more active role in arbitrating, in mediating, in credibility. The way I've always looked at it is, politicians are — When you go to a zoo and you see a monkey throwing its s___, you can't get mad. That's what monkeys do. But you want the media at some point to go, "No! Bad monkey!" And that's really the direction that it should be going in. Not for Republican desires or Democrat desires but for truth.

So today I will begin noting instances of the press calling out bad monkeys. At least, the ones that I find. Hopefully somebody will a lot more readers will pick up on this as well.